This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
A tent typically includes a water resistant, breathable canopy with an attached waterproof, non-breathable floor and a waterproof, non-breathable fly that covers the canopy while allowing an interstitial air space between the two. A system of pole sections is assembled to provide support for the canopy and fly. The poles often have internal shock cording or similar elastic material to interconnect each group of pole segments together and to aid in the assembly of the role segments. One or more poles are typically required to support the tent. Depending on the design, tents can use a combination of poles and guys to support the tent or, in some cases, multiple poles have been configured to allow the tent to be free-standing.
For backpacking, mountaineering and military applications, the lightest possible fabrics providing sufficient strength and protection are used for tents. Historically, the fabrics used for these tents include, but are not limited to, coated and uncoated woven nylons and polyesters. The tent usually has a series of peg loops that are provided near ground level around the periphery for the purpose of securing the tent to its mounting platform, albeit the earth, snow or any other suitable mounting surface. Often, the guy loops are attached at strategic locations on the outside of the tent to allow guy lines to be attached to the tent to further secure it to its mounting platform. Many older, simpler tents were made using water repellant cotton-based fabrics and or fabrics treated with waxes or chemicals to make an otherwise non-water repellant fabric, water repellant. These tents often had no floors. Waterproof flys were sometimes used in extreme, wet conditions.
More recently, there has been a growing trend toward single walled tents using only one layer of light-weight, waterproof material. This can be achieved by using the fly only, which now also becomes the canopy, without the inner tent or by using a light-weight waterproof material for the tent canopy, thus eliminating the fly. These single-walled tents have the advantage of being lighter in weight than those using both a canopy and a fly. However, these types of tents have two major disadvantages, the first being that waterproof materials do not breath, i.e., let air pass through them, and thus can present a suffocation hazard. This disadvantage can be addressed by providing sufficient adjustable openings for air ventilation. The second disadvantage is that once the temperature of the waterproof canopy drops below the dew point, moisture will start to condense out of the surrounding air onto the canopy. This can happen on both the inner and outer surfaces of the canopy and will depend primarily on the canopy material temperature and the humidity of the air near its surface. In a canopy-fly type of tent, such condensation can also occur but typically only on the fly. Since the canopy material is on the occupant side of the fly, the occupant does not come in contact with the condensation.
Accordingly, a need exists to advance the design and construction of light-weight and shape stable tents by the use of alternative materials, such as reinforced polymer films. To this end, the present disclosure describes how this technology can be used in the construction of backpacking and mountaineering tents to achieve very light weight yet strong tents.